Science Alert September 17, 2020 The Thwaites, a Britain-sized glacier in western Antarctica, is melting at an alarming rate: It is retreating by about half a mile per year. Scientists estimate the glacier will lose all its ice in about 200 to 600 years. When it does, it will raise sea levels by about 1.6-2 feet. Right now, the glacier acts as a buffer between the warming sea and other glaciers. Its collapse could bring neighbouring ice masses in western Antarctica down with it. Added up, that process would raise sea levels by nearly 10 feet, permanently submerging many coastal […]
Tag Archives: Climatology
Turbulence affects aerosols and cloud formation
Science Daily September 16, 2020 Traditionally the mechanics of cloud formation have not accounted for turbulence. Researchers at the Michigan Technological University investigated the aspects of cloud formation under controlled conditions including the effects of fluctuations, produced by turbulence. The measurements show a clear transition from a regime in which the mean saturation ratio dominates to one in which the fluctuations determine cloud properties. Measurements in the chamber show that turbulence can mimic the behaviors that have been attributed to particle variation, primarily size and composition. According to the researchers their model will help forecasters predict the fluctuations Planet Ocean-Cloud […]
Giant Gaping Void Emerges in Siberia, The Latest in a Dramatic Ongoing Phenomenon
Science Alert September 2, 2020 A bubble of methane gas, swelling beneath Siberia’s melting permafrost for who knows how long, has burst open to form an impressive 50-metre-deep (164-foot-deep) crater throwing chunks of ice and rock hundreds of metres away from the epicentre. It is not clear when the hole formed, or if climate change played a role. The giant holes are thought to result from the sudden collapse of hills, or swellings of tundra, which themselves form when melting permafrost causes a build-up of methane beneath the surface. Methane is 84 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than […]
Geoengineering is just a partial solution to fight climate change
Science Daily July 20, 2020 In theory, spraying sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere at different locations, to form sulfuric acid clouds that block some solar radiation, could be adjusted every year to keep global warming at levels set in the Paris goals. According to a team of researchers in the US (UC Davis, UC Berkeley) no single technology to combat climate change will fully address the growing crisis, and we need to stop burning fossil fuels and aggressively harness wind and solar energy to power society ASAP. The regional impacts of geoengineering, including on precipitation and the Antarctic ozone […]
The Locust Plague in East Africa Is Sending Us a Message, And It’s Not Good News
Science Alert July 3, 2020 Swarming in the trillions, voracious insects are destroying precious pastures and crops in what is considered the worst regional locust plague in decades, from Kenya through Ethiopia and Yemen, reaching as far as parts of northern India. According to researchers in Kenya and Germany the first major swarms emerged late last year, after unusually warm and wet weather, and they numbered in the hundreds of billions. Come April, the next generation hit the skies, this time in the trillions. The third generation is expected to take off this July in even larger numbers. Treating huge […]
Scientists Discover The South Pole Is Warming 3x Faster Than The Rest of The Planet
Science Alert June 30, 2020 An international team of researchers (New Zealand, USA – Ohio University, Rutgers University, UK) used an ensemble of climate model experiments to show that the recent warming lies within the upper bounds of the simulated range of natural variability. According to the study the warming resulted from a strong cyclonic anomaly in the Weddell Sea caused by increasing sea surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific. This circulation advected warm and moist air from the South Atlantic into the Antarctic interior. The results underscore the intimate linkage of interior Antarctic climate to tropical variability. The […]
Scientists Recommend These 4 ‘Weapons’ in Our War Against Climate Change
Science Alert March 16, 2020 In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius explored whether Earth’s temperatures were influenced by the presence of heat-absorbing gases in the atmosphere. He calculated that if carbon dioxide concentrations doubled, global temperatures would rise by 5°C – even more at the poles. According to a team of researchers in Australia the world is on track to fulfilling Arrhenius’ prediction. If we continue the current trajectory, Earth will warm up to 4.8°C above pre-industrial times by 2100. They examine four fronts to battle the climate change: Plant a lot more trees, Turn carbon dioxide into rock, Make […]
Deep learning accurately forecasts heat waves, cold spells
EurekAlert February 4, 2020 Researchers at Rice University have created a deep learning computer system called “capsule neural network”. During training, it examines hundreds of pairs of maps. Each map shows surface temperatures and air pressures at five-kilometers height, and each pair shows those conditions several days apart. The training includes scenarios that produced extreme weather — extended hot and cold spells that can lead to deadly heat waves and winter storms. Once trained, the system was able to examine maps it had not previously seen and make five-day forecasts of extreme weather with 85% accuracy…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Nanoparticles of Fungal Spores Have Been Detected Floating in Our Atmosphere
Science Alert January 26, 2020 Aerosol nanoparticles play an important role in the climate system by affecting cloud formation and properties, as well as in human health because of their deep reach into lungs and the circulatory system. The sudden appearance of large numbers of atmospheric nanoparticles is commonly attributed to secondary formation from gas-phase precursors. Researchers at UC Irvine have detected a mode of fungal fragments with a mobility diameter of roughly 30 nm released in episodic bursts in ambient air over an agricultural area in northern Oklahoma. These events reached concentrations orders of magnitude higher than other reports […]
Can solar geoengineering mitigate both climate change and income inequality?
Science Daily January 13, 2020 An international team of researchers (University of California, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California, Cornell University, Switzerland, Canada) applied macroeconomic impact models and combined historical evidence with climate simulations of mean annual temperature and precipitation. They found that the impacts of climate changes on global GDP-per-capita by the end of the century are temperature-driven, highly dispersed, and model dependent. Across all model specifications, however, income inequality between countries is lower with solar geoengineering. They found that precipitation has little to no effect on GDP growth in our results, but there is a relationship for […]